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Priest builds
Leveling Builds Shadow tree considered fastest leveling build It is common knowledge that the fastest, cheapest, most worry free way to level a priest to 70 is to have the little neighbor girl do it while you read the complete works of Hermann Hesse in another room. But on the off chance that you've lost your copy of Steppenwolf or that Sally is away for the week at Blizzcon, then the shadow tree is widely considered the fastest solo method for leveling a priest in PvE. Discipline and Holy have extremely useful applications in PvP, Arena, and Raid environments, of course, but the high DPS and safety of a Shadow build makes it the most popular choice for general leveling. Here's a build showing 51 points in Shadow, a quick path to getting Dispersion at 60 (along with Shadow Form at 40 and Mind Flay at 20). And a full 13/0/58 with a focus on solo levelling. If you adore instances, want to try leveling as a Holy spec for a challenge, or you're playing a holy priest because you like playing one then see this guide: Leveling a Holy Priest. Test Builds and Unorthodox Builds Secondary Disc/Holy Another common build for a level 70 holy priest who is raiding is listed below. This spec is for the priest who does not focus on crit, is able to manage their mana efficiency (HPM) without the need for Serendipity and Mental Agility, but would like to have Circle of Healing, Desperate Prayer, and Holy Concentration. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVhb0hZfotcfMqVhVcs Also, a variation on this is for the Priest who between talents and the Glyph of Flash Heal and Glyph of Power Word: Shield want to focus on mana efficiency by stacking crit and using Flash Heal and Power Word: Shield as their primary healing spells. This variation is also good for the Shadow Priest who has respeced Holy but is still wearing gear which stacks crit and has a lower mana regen. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVhbhhxZfxucc0qwhV Secondary Disc/Holy (Divine Spirit Priest) A common build that complements a priest with a deep holy build as above. It gets a useful caster buff of Divine Spirit with Improved Divine Spirit and sacrifices Circle of Healing and healing bonuses. A guild with two priests raiding together will likely prefer for one of them to have this build. Still a capable tank healer and raid healer. Not much changes when going from Circle of Healing to obtaining Improved Divine Spirit, except for that Silent Resolve may not be of much use, as untanked targets will aggro from healing, regardless of how many points into Silent Resolve you may have. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVhbkhxzbZfxxcc0qVhc For variations, refer to the section above. Support 25-Man Raid Healer http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVhbdIxtr0szbRZfLxc http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVhbkIxtr0oZfLxcc0qz (with more healing and less utility) This build should not be widely used. Its main focus is enabling the support healer (as opposed to the main healers) in the raid to efficiently assist in healing the raid while the main healers heal the tanks. Since not many raids actually need support healers this build is very specialized for large raids. The build retains enough Holy talents to replace killed main healers for a short time. *Caster Boosting - Using both the Improved Divine Spirit and Power Infusion talents these priests can improve the performance of any caster in the raid dramatically. This combined boost of spell damage and healing can boost a raid's DPS or healing dynamically as required during raid engagements. *Improved Decursing - Decreased mana cost of decursing spells, combined with a larger mana bank make these priests decursing machines. When facing one of those pesky raid bosses or even trash, who take a fancy to debuffing the entire raid or large portions of it, these priests prove to be a valuable asset. Notes *These builds avoid Holy tree abilities that require a critical hit on the priest to proc, such as Blessed Recovery and Blessed Resilience. They also avoid offensive abilities, in particular Searing Light and Surge of Light. These are generally PvP talents. *Critical heals are often a waste since they have a tendency to overheal, especially in raid situations with multiple healers. However, with Inspiration critical heals gain an important secondary effect. It's possible to spam low-rank heals to trigger the effect. *A great deal of threat reduction is not usually necessary with expert tanking, but helpful in some encounters and will help deal with poor and undergeared tanks. *Mental Agility gives a mana reduction on most of the spells affected by Absolution, but given the scarcity of useful low-tier talents in the Discipline tree, Absolution is a popular choice. *Lightwell has been changed to give a great deal more healing and Spirit of Redemption now lasts 15 seconds after death and increases spirit by 5%, so depending on your playstyle and the amount of Spirit you have these may be viable talents. Unorthodox Disc/Shadow Priest Arena Build http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxhbuhRtMesZZ0xfrofo Mainly the standard Discipline build but with more emphasis on 2v2 Arena PvP. The method of using a Mind Flay to keep an opponent from kiting a less mobile partner and a Shadow Word: Pain to procure Blackout make it extremely specialized. The addition of Improved Psychic Scream can be stacked with the effect from Vengeful Gladiator's Mooncloth Gloves (or any version of a priest's Arena Reward gloves,) reducing the cooldown on Psychic Scream to 23 seconds. The use of Power Infusion is noticeable when used to push damage as an opponent is near death and the addition of the priest's damage would end the match quicker. Despite the damage talents, the main focus of this build is to provide support by both healing and harassment towards an opponent's healer through a variety of interrupts, Mana Burns, and dispels. A Priest paired with a Rogue would see the most benefit from this build. Shadow Healer http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bq0rzhZfZG0frofkciqcz This build is recommended for leveling, versatile priests, occupying good holes in group (as a dps healer, or as support healer, or as main healer, if none are present this is a decent healer spec), and giving survival to priest in soloing. For this priest, it is well recommended to accumulate Spirit more than Intellect, even if just to rise duff their mana regen from talents. Depending on what you do when not raiding/grouping, you can always switch Blackout for Spirit Tap. * Strengths - The combination of damage output and good healing. * Weaknesses - Small mana pool Please note that this spec would only be feasible for 5-man encounters. Do not attempt to use this spec in a 10 or 25 man raid encounter, as you are less useful than a Holy Priest or Shadow Priest using a cookie-cutter build. Multi-purpose PvP build http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxbrzhGzbZZ0xfiofk0fqb While this build leaves out the powerful 41-shadow-point Vampiric Touch ability and Misery, it incorporates Shadowform, Meditation, Inner Focus, Divine Spirit and Improved Divine Spirit, the latter four to try to prolong the priest's mana as long as possible. This build should be used for PvP battles, where a priest can damage and heal (secondary healer perhaps) concurrently. Shadowform here is debatable, due to its restrictions on healing while used, and can be switched (along with the 2 point Healing Focus) into the build to get Power Infusion if wanted. However, already with the discipline talents of Mental Strength, Matrydom, Improved Inner Fire, and the Divine Spirit talents, this build hopes to increase the survivability and longevity of the priest while battling, at the same time leaving enough Shadow talents to increase the damage output of the priest. * note: Spirit Tap/Blackout is also for the priest to choose. Smiter http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVIbuh0tbxoZfxt0bbVb Designed for maximizing Holy damage, this build provides enormous and reliable damage (due to Holy damage not being subject to resistances). In addition, the Priest retains their ability to heal, making them useful as a healer and DPS. The downsides are the lack of possible damage sustainability and utility. Unlike the shadow tree, which allows a priest a consistent and efficient damage output, the Smiter is able to quickly deal large amounts of holy damage. Another powerful tool used by the holy warrior is the ability of Power Infusion. This becomes incredibly useful for buffing not only yourself for healing or attacking, but also as a utility for other spell casters in a party. The major downsides of this build are the relatively high mana consumption (both healing and damage) and the vulnerability to interrupts. For these reasons a priest is expected to have decent gear before attempting this build. The changes to Spirit made in Patch 2.4 complement this build quite well, since Meditation, Spiritual Guidance, Improved Divine Spirit, and Spirit of Redemption invite heavy use of Spirit as a way to both improve spell damage as well as Mana regeneration. This makes a Smiter build an excellent choice for a Priest soloing and both dealing damage and healing in small instances with the ability to cast skilled greater heals in 0.5 seconds less time, compared to unskilled Priests like most shadow builds. Still, the mana usage is quite remarkable and is best supported with trinkets like Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon and/or Bangle of Endless Blessings. Playstyle for the different Smiter builds varies slightly, depending on whether Spirit Tap or Power Infusion has been skilled, but usually Freecasts from Surge of Light — which is the Holy Warriors compensation for the +100% Crit Damage that other DDs gain — is used in combination with Inner Focus to gain a few seconds out of the Five Second Rule for some Manareg, when dealing Damage. Since Holy Nova can crit on both party members as well as Mobs, it will frequently give freecasts from Surge of Light at a very high mana cost though. The important stats for the Smiter (Hit>Crit>Spirit>Spelldamage) are somewhat hard to find for a priest in endgamge content at the moment (Patch 2.4). In beginning play, you are usually asked to heal and shouldn't discount your own abilities as stats up to 60 should be int/spirit due to spirit increasing damage by such an amount. It is now possible to stack spell crit at lower levels but until you get Surge of Light it is not suggested. After 60 definitely get spell crit over spirit. It should not be hard to get 30% spell crit for Holy Offense spells, note that it will only be listed as 20% crit, 25% Holy crit on your tooltip. You can get up to 35% if you sacrifice spirit but doing so would reduce longevity and damage per hit. Keep Fade hotbarred at all levels as the damage can be quite a bit more than low level tanks are capable of holding. Most raids will rather decide for a shadowpriest for the greater utility a shadow brings. Level 80 Builds :Until the Wrath of the Lich King expansion is actually released, all talent info is subject to change, especially over level 70. Penance Raiding Build *58/13/0 (Blueheaven of Kel'Thuzad) This build is the level 70 Disc build modified slightly for 80 compatibility. The big changes between this spec and the level 70 one are as follows: * Take Improved Inner Fire over Silent Resolve because of the added spell power. * Divine Aegis should proc a lot due to crit playing a major role. * Aspiration will lower the cooldown of a lot fo useful abilities but is mainly taken for Penance. Smiter with Spirit of Redemption and Pain Supression *42/28/0 +1(Snowlord of Thrall) Crit heavy Holy build Bliz seems to be itching to open up an intellect build for healers. In fact, it is difficult to choose talents in the holy tree while avoiding crit considerations. Holy specialization and Test of Faith increase crit chance 5% or 11% if target is under 50% health. Holy concentration * Imp Holy conc, together with Surge of Light give an almost 50% chance of a clearcasting state after a healing crit. The clearcasting state with this build procs a mana-free flash heal, a mana-free greater heal, and 30% spell haste for two greater/binding/flash heals. I need verification, but a holy crit would seem to open up a spell hasted sequence of greater heal + greater heal + flash heal for the mana cost of a single greater heal cast. Alternatively, if casting mana-free spells does not reset the 5 second timer, healers could use a critical heal to cast a mana-free greater heal + flash heal and quickly thereafter begin to recharge mana. *14/57/0 High spirit Holy build A more traditional build focusing on high spirit. This build extends to Mental Agility to receive the 10% mana reduction bonus to instant cast spells. *20/51/0 Shadow/Disc Hybrid (pvp) *38/0/33 (Untested) Made by: Wowwiki user: Graceland7. Wow char: Graceland. Server: Runetotem. Alliance. Imp Divine Spirit Holy Build A new version of the old Holy/Disc hybrid build. This allows you to have Imp. Divine Spirit while getting a lot of the goodies out of the Holy tree (minus CoH). If you raid consistently with another priest that has CoH this is a great secondary build that can heal main tanks all night long due to their larger mana pool. Casters will also love the Spirit buff. *28/43/0 (Lucithus of Khadgar) Solo PvE Shadow build High damage build focused on solo PvE play. For a raid environment, priest could take Shadow Affinity and/or Psychic Horror instead. *14/0/57 Shadow Raiding Build High damage with mana efficiency. *14/0/57 (Xaeros of Shadowmoon) Holy Leveling Build A WotLK build for a solo holy priest. Focus is on abilities to maximize solo DPS and healing in 5 men instances while leveling. *17/51/3 (Faradhim of Dawnbringer) Holy-Crit Build (PvE) A build based on Holy Concentration (Improved) and Surge of Light while keeping mental agility up. It is based on a stable mp5 and a decent crit rate (try to keep spirit and intellect 1:1 and build up you crit to 20%). Keep an eye out for buffs that pop up and use them wisely. Note: A priest can choose to put 2 points from Healing Focus into Improved Renew; however, it has been noted that damage received in most heroics and some raids can increase in this case, and it's considered that putting those 2 points in Healing Focus can be a better use. *13/58/0 Hybrid-Holy/Discipline Build A build based on maximizing healing and mp5 without Guardian Spirit. Sacrificing a few of the higher holy talents for pure healing power of the mid range discipline tree, this spec is excellent for constant big heals and focuses completely on heroics and raids, and not soloing. Sacrificing Divine Providence for mental strength (15% intelect) and incorporating Divine and Improved Divine Spirit for the extra 80 spirit and 120 sp. Also Focused Power (increases healing by 4%) costs only 2 talent points whereas Test of Faith costs 3 (6% more healing and crit chance on target below 50% health). This spec is purely healing power and mana efficiency. *30/41/0 See Also *WOTLK Priest Survival guide: from a dwarf priest, contains examples for leveling priest builds *Healing/Holy DPS leveling guide for northrend: Also contains a build example and glyph suggestions Category:Guides Category:Talents Category:Priest talents Category:Priests